Last year, the Rockets brought in VanVleet for $40 million, Dillon Brooks for $20 million, Jeff Green for $9 million, Landale for $8 million, Holiday for $4.5 million, and Tate for $7.5 million. With all these expiring contracts and team options, we thought Stone would use these assets to pull off a big move over the past two years, but in the end, Stone did nothing. Now, with Green and Sengun's contract extensions taking effect next year, the benefits of rookie scale contracts have been completely missed. Fox, Ingram, Hunter, Durant—none of them were acquired. Except for Durant, the other three were affordable and solid choices. Instead, the Rockets sat on a pile of trade assets, contracts, and draft picks and did nothing. The problem of lacking a strong scorer hasn't been solved at all. To put it bluntly, any team would love to play the Rockets in the playoffs because we’re practically the easiest opponent.
Which opportunity did he turn down? Not defending the FO at all, but hot takes like this thread are absurd. The Nets didn't end up trading Cam Johnson. The Bulls didn't even trade Vucevic. Maybe nobody wanted to play ball? I'm sure we could have got Beal for our expirings, but that seems as absurd as this thread.
Ingram doesn’t play winning ball and highly inconsistent. Fox can’t shoot and will be a free agent after next year. Hunter doesn’t make this team better and Durant is old. Looking long term it makes sense to let this young team gel the rest of the season see where it goes and reassess in the summer.
What Stone is doing make sense because people generally don't want to copy their predecessors. Morey was a guy who took big swings and work on squeezing the most out of what he has. Think about some of the moves he made, like trading 2 1st round picks for the moody Artest, trading starting PG Rafer for someone else's 3rd string PG Lowry. These are moves that get you fired if things don't work out. And in the end whether it was the Westbrook trade where he supposedly promised CP3 No trade, or the HK issue where he presumably lost Tilman lots of money, he did too many brash things that clearly Fertitta would not want in his replacement. So Stone being the most cookie-cutter generic "as long as I don't do something risky no one can criticize me" GM make sense following up on Morey.
Hell yeah, Stone should have brought in whatever sort of known name he could get and get eliminated in the same round but with less assets for next year...... There was no one available that made The Rockets contenders, no one.... Durant was the best case scenario for the next two years and that's it.... Fox ain't winning ****.... Ingram ain't winning ****.... These dudes are losers, you either bring a significant player or stay put for when an actual star that can put you ahead becomes available. Rockets have nothing to lose....
Exact mindset I have “we’re ahead of schedule” is such a loser mindset that the FO adopted and fooled the fans
We were 2nd seed and on pace to win 55+. Silly to say there's no one who would make us a contender, the rest of the league is already debating whether we are with or without an addition. I just wanted a good high volume shooter. Yes it's worth a couple of seconds or a late late first if you were intending to be 6th seed and the opportunity opens up to be #2 seed and have home court in round 1. That's a whole extra summers worth of development that took place. These guys are going to keep improving at a staggering average rate for a core they just need some f'in shooting to have the same offensive opportunities as an average NBA offense.
@Salvy delivered such great analysis, I need him to tell me what pick in the second round this will be for Houston in the year 2026; 2026 2 - LAC, BOS, IND or MIA swap rights MEM will receive the more favorable of (1) the LAC' 2026 2nd round pick and (2) the most favorable of BOS's 2026 2nd round pick, IND's 2026 2nd round pick and MIA's 2026 2nd round pick and HOU will receive the less favorable of (1) and (2) (via MIA to IND; via MIL to MEM; via MEM' right to swap IND or MIA for BOS; via MEM' right to swap BOS, IND or MIA for LAC)
Uhm...what? The average age a superstar is ready to lead a team to Finals victory is 27. You might want to check how old MJ, Lebron, Shaq, Curry/KD, Jokic, Giannis etc. were. It's too early to be thinking championship with this core. I don't care what other people think I'd so much rather BUILD a championship team than BUY one, at least when it comes to core players. It's so much more special. I'll always believe that.
Imagine if morey drafted reed, reed sucked, and more got fired. I think you would rather have that than a rockets championship. I can’t imagine how long you would celebrate those 2 things.
